Kaye Bonner Cummings

“The arts have been part of my entire life in one form or another. My mother painted and my father had been a singer. My art career started in earnest with 4 years of drawing and painting classes at Clovis High School, followed by four years as an art history and studio art major at Stanford University.

Immediately upon graduation, I moved to Europe for 1 ½ years. I first lived with a family in Denmark where I worked briefly in the art department of an advertising agency. From there, I moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where I studied printmaking at the Art Academy and learned the art of stained-glass fabrication from a stained-glass artisan. Next, I moved to Florence, Italy, where I focused on pen and ink drawing and photography. Finally, I traveled throughout most of Europe sketching and photographing its splendors.

I returned to Fresno, completed a few stained-glass commissions, then entered Fresno State in an art Master’s program where I studied photography in earnest. I met and married the head of a stained-glass company in San Francisco, and after working there a couple of years, we moved the business to Fresno where I continued fabricating stained-glass windows. After 3 three years, we turned the business over to my brother-in-law, and my husband became an interior designer.

I focused on raising two children and turned to oil and watercolor painting for many years. I had many mostly watercolor exhibits – in private homes, a gallery and in 3 group exhibits at the Fresno Art Museum. Later, I left visual art production, tool singing lessons and joined the Fresno Community Chorus.

In 1991, I traveled with a small group of photographers under the auspices of the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite on a trip to Alaska where I both learned more about photographic process and photographed images of the surroundings.

Then from 2000 to 2012, I traveled and photographed extensively throughout the world. My main occupation since 1991 is as CEO of the Bonner Family Foundation, funders of primarily arts organizations.”